Brian,
The Oxford, Cambridge, and Arden editions of the plays all have their good points. As you say, their joint problem is that the editors are pandering more to an audience of undergradute / postgraduate students, and the bibliographic information and occasionally redundant footnotes are a problem. I do find the Oxford editions to be slightly more concise while remaining useful, if that counts for anything. I seem to remember Bevington's complete edition striking a nice balance, but it has been a while since i've used it.
Donne is a rather more tricky proposition, given his textual history. The penguin edition seems to be mostly okay, but I can't recall offhand if it modernizes spelling or not. There's the forthcoming Longman edition, which are usually both plentiful and intelligent with their notes, but it's expensive and probably not worth it. On the plus side, it's better than the Variorum edition, which boasts no less than a page of commentary for each line of poetry! Academia gone mad.
Sorry that wasn't more helpful.
Craig
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